


Hurricane

by ceciliaregent



Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: Coming of Age, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 07:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceciliaregent/pseuds/ceciliaregent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, Justin will remember the night JC wore Chris’s leather jacket, the one he’d spent two thirds of a week’s salary on from a thrift shop in Orlando.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurricane

JC moved in with them the second year. All the MMC kids whose parents hadn’t moved to Florida were farmed out to different families with the show; they paid some room and board, which came in handy since Justin’s father tried really hard, but didn’t always make every payment quite on time, especially with the new baby, and Orlando was more expensive than the Memphis suburb where they were subletting their house. The first year they had Nikki, but then her parents got divorced and her mom came down to Florida, so they got Nikki’s boyfriend instead.

MMC was really small, so of course Justin knew JC. Even though he was one of the older kids, they’d hung out a couple of times, playing basketball or talking about the show. JC was ok, relaxed and comfortable and easygoing, though he wasn’t as cool as Tony and it was kind of a mystery to Justin why Tony seemed to like him so much. That was actually good, Justin thought when his mom told him JC’d be moving in when rehearsals for the new season started. They were driving to a dentist’s appointment, and she looked over at him at a stoplight to see if he was ok with it. He was. They more or less liked the same kind of music, Stevie and Brian and Roberta Flack, where Tony had an obsessively detailed knowledge of Seattle grunge. If JC or Dale asked him what he had on his headphones he’d grin and say “Fastbacks” or “Screaming Trees,” bands Justin had never heard of. He never talked to Tony unless he was spoken to first.

JC, though, JC was ok. Part of the rent at Justin’s house was babysitting Justin, which was hideous enough as an idea and could have been totally humiliating in practice, but even Nikki was all right about it and JC, maybe, even better. He made driving Justin home from the set and hanging around watching TV with him and Nikki seem like something he actually wanted to do, and he never got annoyed when Nikki had to bring Justin along if they went out for sodas. He’d just ask Tony and Dale to come too, and he’d turn to Justin and ask him what he thought about things instead of rolling his eyes or trying to pretend Justin wasn’t there. A few times, when Nikki and Jennifer, Tony’s girlfriend, went to the bathroom, someone started to say something that JC cut off quickly, looking at Justin, but the next morning while they were all hanging around waiting for filming to start he sometimes stopped by the younger boys’ dressing room with a new CD he thought Justin might like or, once or twice, a lyric he was working on. “What d’you think?” he’d say. 

What Justin thought was that JC had a really great voice, and could write really well, and that he should break up with Nikki, who could be kind of mean. He never said so.

8

Living with JC was actually not much different from not living with JC. They spent most of the late afternoons until Justin’s mother got home from work watching TV or shooting hoops in the driveway. JC, unlike Nikki, never absolutely made him sit down and do homework, but sometimes there wasn’t a lot else to do if Nikki happened to be over and they went up to JC’s room and shut the door. JC sometimes looked guilty about leaving Justin on his own but he did it anyway. Nikki was usually gone by the time Justin’s mother got home. Last year it had been JC who was usually gone, but the upshot was basically the same.

Justin sat at the kitchen table and did his math homework. It was very quiet upstairs. He solved word problems about steamships on the Atlantic Ocean and wished JC and Nikki would break up. He wanted to be playing basketball or maybe Nintendo but it was pretty boring by himself.

8

Justin still had a nine-thirty bedtime, and his mother was pretty strict about enforcing it, especially when he had to be on the set early the next morning. He was twelve years old, though, and he was never tired that early, so he usually just read under the covers, or put his walkman on. He liked the music more though that was riskier because he couldn’t hear if she was coming to check up on him in time to get the headphones off and look convincingly asleep. That was easier if he was reading, because he could hear her on the stairs and flick the flashlight off and damp the tiny rush of adrenaline that came from thinking he might get caught, enough so that his breathing was even when she opened the door. Usually he eventually got tired enough to go to sleep. Once, though, he just /couldn’t/, and finally he’d gone downstairs to get a drink of water. JC, who hadn’t even been home yet when he’d first gone to bed, and his mom were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and talking. He’d blinked his eyes in the doorway and stared at them for a second, and then his mom had noticed him standing there.

“Honey?” she’d said. “You ok?”

“Yeah,” he had said. “I just wanted some water.”

She had gotten him a big glass and let him sit with them to finish it. JC had talked a little bit about a song he and Tony thought they might try to do, and his mom had brought up a movie she wanted to go see that weekend. It had been past eleven when she tucked him into bed. Justin had gotten the distinct feeling that, when they saw he was in the kitchen, they’d stopped discussing whatever they’d been talking about before.

8

At the end of the first nine months JC lived with them, the show was cancelled.

There was a cast meeting after a taping one afternoon, which was unusual. Mostly they just took their makeup off and got to leave, but that day Marian, the director, came around to all the dressing rooms and said they should come to the rehearsal room when they were in street clothes again. Justin and Ryan went down together and grabbed seats next to Britney. “D’you want some gum?” she said.

Justin took a piece and they all chewed in silence while they waited. A knot of older kids came in next, JC among them. He gave a little wave across the room before they all sat down too. Everyone drifted in in bits and pieces: the whole cast, the crew, some parents who happened to be around. Nobody was really talking. By the time Marian got up to speak, with a couple of producers next to her, Justin kind of already probably knew.

 

8

Justin’s mother gave their subletters in Memphis a month’s notice and found a real estate agent in Orlando. They’d been there for nearly two years now, and Justin barely knew anyone back in Tennessee. He thought he should be more upset; Britney talked about going back to Louisiana like she’d been given a prison sentence, with grim determination about marking time and getting out. He’d miss Jake, who lived next door to him and who liked basketball and music too. They sang in the choir together at the church they went to, though Jake’s voice had broken earlier and he was sitting with the baritones now. Justin thought he’d probably have been moved to tenor soon, himself; it was starting to be hard to hit the high notes and sometimes his voice cracked in two when he tried to talk.

It did when he was saying goodbye to JC, two days after the show wrapped. JC had taken him to the cast party the last night, brought him home at ten o’clock. Nikki had waited in the car while JC took Justin in and said “I’ll be kind of late, probably, Mrs. Harless” with a questioning tone. She’d just nodded at him though and said

“Be good, JC” and he’d grinned and gone. The next morning he’d come in while Justin and his mom were eating breakfast, looking tired but pretty normal, and Justin’s mother had frowned.

“JC,” she said. “Late doesn’t mean tomorrow.”

“Yes ma’am,” he’d said. “Sorry.”

“You ok?”

He’d nodded, smiled at both of them, and gone upstairs. Justin heard the shower start a few minutes later. 

That evening JC had started packing. 

He and Tony had coach tickets to LA the next afternoon; they’d been talking about it for weeks, ever since the day after Marian broke the news to everyone. They had a little money in the bank and they thought they could get jobs waiting tables when they got there, while they tried to make it big. Neither of them was going to college. JC, Justin knew, hated school, much worse than Justin did. The only time Justin had ever seen his mom act like a mom with JC had been when his tutor had called and said that he hadn’t been turning in assignments. He was going to fail his required physics class if he wasn’t careful. Justin didn’t hear his mom say anything - he thought it had probably happened after he’d been in bed, when they were talking in the kitchen - but JC was grounded for a week. He’d spent most of the time in his room, trying out new chords on the guitar he’d gotten for Christmas. Sometimes he let Justin watch, even though his hands were too small still to play a full-size guitar. JC had big hands, much bigger than the rest of him, although he was tall; long fingers that stretched across the guitar’s frets and pinned the strings down firmly. He said Justin’s would grow.

JC sold his Jeep to his friend Joey, who Justin knew vaguely. Joey’s family lived in Orlando and Joey wasn’t going to college either, so he’d need wheels to get to whatever job he got. Joey and his dad came over the last morning to pick it up. It seemed like he’d driven it plenty, so JC just showed him a couple of things and tossed him the keys. Justin hung his arm around the front porch post and swung slowly back and forth, watching while JC shook hands with Joey’s dad, a big jovial guy with a deep Brooklyn accent and salt and pepper hair, and then hugged Joey. Joey was taller than JC, and a little bulkier, and he picked him up and swung him around. JC laughed, and clapped Joey on the shoulder, and said something too soft for Justin to hear; his back was turned. Joey nodded and said “Good luck,” and then he got into the car and started it up. He waved a little as he pulled out and down the street, and JC, who was watching him go, lifted his hand. He stood there for a few seconds, then ran his hands down his hips quickly and turned back to the house. He smiled when he saw Justin, a quick crinkled smile that was gone almost as soon as it appeared, and when he came up the porch steps he ruffled Justin’s hair.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s cool, he’ll sell it back to me if I ever wind up back here. Want to help me load the car?”

Justin’s mom drove JC to the airport after lunch. She asked Justin if he wanted to come, but he didn’t. His stomach wasn’t feeling too good, but he didn’t want to worry them, so he didn’t say, just that he had stuff to do. His mom wrinkled her forehead a little but didn’t quite frown, and didn’t say anything. “OK,” she said. “I guess you can stay here by yourself. Don’t go anywhere though, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

He nodded.

“JC!” she called upstairs. “You ready?”

His voice came floating down the stairwell. “Coming!” He came around the corner and clattered down the stairs, his backpack over his shoulder. There were already two suitcases in the car, and JC’s guitar, and a bag with some sandwiches and drinks. He’d given everything that didn’t fit away. 

“You have your toothbrush?” Justin’s mom asked. 

“I checked everything,” JC said, “I got it all.”

“all right,” she said, and went outside, shutting the screen door behind her. JC turned towards Justin, who was standing in the open arch between the front hall and the living room. JC was wearing jeans and a Redskins baseball cap; his hair curled out around the bottom. He smiled.

“I left my chord book on your bed,” JC said. “You should get your mom to get you a guitar pretty soon.”

Justin nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and that was when his voice cracked. His stomach really didn’t feel good, he thought he’d lie down after JC was gone.

“Ok,” JC said. “I guess I’m really going.” He’d hardly been looking at Justin, just sort of around the front hall, and didn’t seem to have noticed the crack - not that he would have teased Justin about it, he never did - but suddenly his eyes were in sharp focus. “You’re gonna have a good time in Memphis,” he said. “You should write to me and tell me how it’s going. Your mom has my parents’ address, they’re going to send me anything anyone writes.”

“I will,” Justin said. He couldn’t imagine what he would have to tell JC and Tony about. 

JC nodded. He stuck out his hand. Justin shook it, and then JC pulled him into a hug. He was growing, but JC was still taller by a few inches. He gave great hugs, warm, rocking you back and forth a little and squeezing you close. Justin felt his stomach do a little slow roll, and he remembered JC hugging Joey that morning. He wanted to be big enough to do that. He shivered all down his spine, and JC pulled him even closer. Justin wished he’d never let go.

“Good luck,” Justin said into his shoulder. “You’ll do great.”

JC gave him one last squeeze and pulled away. “Hope so.” He reached out and scrubbed a hand through Justin’s hair, then took a step forward suddenly and kissed the top of Justin’s head. “See you, kiddo,” he said.

“Bye,” Justin said. “See you.” His cheeks were burning.

JC turned and went out the screen door. It banged behind him. After a few seconds Justin followed. JC was just closing the car door, but he saw Justin come out and waved. Justin waved back, and his mom started the car and pulled out of the driveway, turning right down the street towards the exit to their development. Justin sat down on the porch steps, his arms around his stomach, and watched it go.

8

After the meeting to announce that MMC was being canceled, JC had taken him home. Nikki hadn’t come with them; they’d stopped at a convenience store on the way and bought ice cream cones. Justin held them carefully for the five-minute ride back to the house so they wouldn’t drip on JC’s Jeep, though JC for once didn’t seem to care really. He was looking straight ahead at the road, drumming softly on the wheel and singing under his breath, a little tunelessly and without words so Justin didn’t know what.  
When they’d gotten back to the house, JC had parallel-parked in front of it like always. Justin had handed him his rainbow ice and ate his own King Cone quietly. He liked the salty crunch of peanuts on top of the sweet chocolate, and underneath all that the comforting smooth vanilla.

They hadn’t gone in, just sat on the front steps until the ice cream was gone, just like Justin was doing now. JC had leaned back on his elbows. He’d had sunglasses on so Justin couldn’t really see his expression when he took a quick sideways glance.

“I liked having you live here,” he’d blurted suddenly. 

JC had looked at him carefully and smiled. “I liked being here,” he’d said. “Thank you for having me.”

Justin had been looking forward to having JC come back the next season.

8

Memphis was fine, even though, because of when the show wrapped, he had to start in the middle of eighth grade. He caught up with some old friends right away, and one of his cousins was in his class at school. He tried out for the basketball team and choir, got onto both easily, and got invited to parties a lot, which his mom let him go to as long as there were going to be parents there. A lot of girls wanted to go out with him, he knew, but he didn’t really like any of them that way, so he didn’t do anything; that just seemed to make him more popular than he had been before. He liked everyone back, but he was different than them, and everyone knew it, including him.

It was true he’d done a couple of things when he was younger and living in Memphis all the time, but when he’d really started, when he had just turned eleven, that was when it had happened. Not even so much Star Search, because who ever heard of those kids again, but moving to Orlando. For two years he’d drawn a paycheck that was almost as much as what most of his classmates’ parents made, more than his own mom, and he’d worked pretty much all the time, and his friends were other people who worked. He’d only realized how different he was from the kids at his old school when he suddenly was surrounded by people who were pretty much like him. He won a spelling bee his first week back in Memphis, and at the Valentine’s Day dance he was elected Mr. Jeter.

He tried to tell Trace about it while they worked on their jump shots, when Trace asked him if he missed Orlando.

“Kind of,” he said, eyeing the basket. The ball slid along the rim and off the other side, and he jogged across to get it. “Like, um, the people, you know? We were all doing the same thing, so, like, we always had stuff to talk about.” He sized the basket up again and took a little step back. “Like, JC--” he said, and shot. Missed again. 

“I think you need to flick your wrist a little more at the end,” Trace said. “My brother says it helps. Who’s JC?”

Justin was surprised. He was sure he’d said something about JC at some point. He thought about him all the time. He’d sent five letters to JC’s parents in Maryland, with a note from his mom tucked in every time, and gotten three back. JC wrote back quickly, always within a week of when he said he’d gotten Justin’s letter, and he said everything was going ok, they hadn’t gotten any work yet but they were getting auditions and they’d found a place to live, and Justin should take care of himself. He signed them “hugs,” and always told Justin to say hi to his mom. Justin had the letters in a box beside his bed, along with a couple of letters he’d gotten from Britney, and a kind of gross but really funny card from Ryan for his birthday, and some things his grandparents had sent him during the two years he was in Orlando, when he mostly didn’t see them. Even though his bedtime was ten-thirty now that he’d turned 13, Justin sometimes read JC’s letters under the covers, when he was waiting to be tired enough to go to sleep. Sometimes in the morning he woke up to JC’s faint blue handwriting crumpled in extreme closeup next to his eyes.

8

First he saw JC, and then he saw his eyes.

He’d come down to the kitchen to get a drink of water before he turned out his light, already in his pajamas, so it was pretty late at night, all the screens open for the summer, cicadas chirping outside, and when he walked through the door there was his mother, sitting at the table, under the hanging light, and there was JC’s slim back and his wild wavy hair, silhouetted against the light, and he stopped for a second, stunned. Then he couldn’t help it, he yelled “JC!” and ran across the room to hug him, and JC jumped and turned, turned, and Justin stopped just before he got to him, looking up in horror at JC’s face, which was blotchy and red and streaked with tears. JC’s throat worked, once, but he couldn’t seem to say anything. Justin felt his own mouth opening and closing, but he didn’t know what to say either, so finally he just threw himself forward and hugged JC hard around the middle, pushing his own head down and into the hollow of JC’s shoulderblade. He felt thin and trembly and warm, the hollow knit of muscle under the thin tshirt and under all of that a hot core burning. He was shaking a little, so gently that you couldn’t have felt it unless you were holding him close. He stood still and then finally he pulled an arm free and rubbed Justin’s back a little bit, and Justin wanted --

“Just,” his mother said.

“yes’m,” he said, into JC’s shoulder. He pushed his head closer, frantically.

“Go up to bed, honey,” she said. She sounded sad. “I’ll come kiss you goodnight in a little bit.”

He nodded, rubbing his forehead against JC’s tshirt, and backed away.

“Night, Justin,” JC said. His voice was even richer than it had been, but a little scratchy. “I’ll see you in the morning, ok?”

I’m not a little kid, Justin wanted to say. But JC was trembling a little more, and he swung around to face the window again, and Justin said “good night” and fled.

He sat on the stairs for ten minutes - his watch had a lightup face - and then crept back to the kitchen as quietly as he could and looked around the door.

JC had his head bent into his hands over the kitchen table, and Justin saw the sharp hunch of his shoulders and the hollow in between and he must have made a noise, though not a loud one. JC didn’t move, but his mother, who was stroking JC’s hair, looked up sharply and over her shoulder and mouthed “Justin.” Justin brought one fist up to his mouth to stop whatever sound he might have been going to make, and backed away slowly. JC’s head looked as if it might be about to tip away from his spine.

8

He stayed with them for three months and Justin never really did find out what happened.

He used the spare bedroom, making the bed as neatly every morning as he’d done in Florida, and drove Justin and Trace to and from school every day. Girls who’d gotten over Justin’s reappearance after a month or so started fluttering around the car again when he showed up in the morning, and JC signed autographs patiently for them, although Justin saw the slight wince, the twitch of his shoulders when Kristie McTavery did a doubletake on the first morning and said “you’re JC Chasez!” in a voice that carried all the way over to the school steps where half the girls in the the eighth grade were gathered while the boys played kickball on the front lawn. He’d smiled at her, though, said yes he was, and even taken a couple of pictures with kids who had cameras with them. Justin himself had had a minor resurgence of celebrity for the rest of the day, but it died down quickly. JC stayed reclusive, though, never getting out of the car for more than a couple of minutes after the first time, never becoming familiar enough to be routine. After two weeks, Kristie and her friend Jenny Johnson cornered Justin on his way to basketball practice and asked why JC was staying with him, and how long he was going to. Justin didn’t really want to admit he didn’t really know, so he said something vague about cheap studio time, but that night he tried to talk to JC.

He’d felt strangely reluctant to ask JC anything after the first night. JC blotchy with tears, his eyes wide with misery, wasn’t something he thought he’d ever forget. He’d tried to ask his mom, but she’d just hugged him and said she was glad he hadn’t been old enough to leave after the show ended, and that JC would tell him when he was ready. She’d sounded so upset that he hadn’t even objected to the hug.

But JC hadn’t told him, and he hadn’t stopped looking sad, though never as bad as that night. Just a little pale around the eyes. He spent most of his time playing the guitar in his bedroom, and since it was a gorgeous late May, sometimes he’d sit out in the backyard and do it there, although he usually stopped when he saw Justin coming out onto the back porch, and Justin never heard him sing along with it, which he always used to do. He got a job right away, at a coffeeshop on the other side of town, and he worked there most evenings after he took Justin home. He’d tried to give Justin’s mom money out of the first paycheck but she’d gotten tight little lines between her eyes, shaken her head and touched JC’s shoulder. “Save it up, honey,” she’d said. So he sent the checks home to his parents to put in his bank account in Maryland. 

He didn’t have to work that night, though, so they tossed a football around in the back yard instead. Justin was much better at basketball, but he liked the shape of a football, the solid way its stitches felt when his palm curved over them just the right way. JC was really good at it; he’d told Justin ages ago that he used to play when he was a kid, though he hadn’t put on weight to match his height, and he’d had to stop. He had effortless aim, though, and plenty of throwing power, and they ran each other around the yard for a couple of hours until they were both flushed and sweating and Justin’s mom called them in for dinner.

Justin thought about it while he was washing his hands, and he thought about it while JC told them at dinner about some co-worker he didn’t like who never cleaned out the filters right, and he thought about it while he put away the dishes that his mom washed and JC dried. When they were done he went upstairs to do his homework, and JC disappeared down the hall to the guest room. If he didn’t pay too much attention it was almost like being in Florida again.

He finished his math homework and went down the hall. The door was ajar, but it was quiet, so he knocked softly before he opened it. 

“Hey, Justin,” JC said. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, holding the guitar in his lap but not playing.

“Hey,” Justin said. “I needed a break.”

JC grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “C’mon in.” He shifted, not really moving but giving the impression of scooting over to make room on the bed. Justin sat down on the end of it, against the wall. He rested his arm on the windowsill and tugged a little on the blind next to his hand, not hard enough to really pull it off anything. 

“What’s up, J?” JC said.

“Nothing,” Justin said. JC didn’t say anything, just strummed a few random chords, picked out a quick run of notes. 

“I was thinking,” Justin said finally, when JC had done a chorus of Oh Susanna. JC smiled a little and played a C chord, but damped the strings right away and cocked his head to one side. “I was, uh, I kind of miss Orlando.” He wished suddenly that he’d planned this out a little better. But he’d started now, so he plowed on. “I haven’t talked to my mom about it yet. But I thought, I thought I’d ask her if I could make a demo with some of my MMC money, and go back down. I could be in school there and be auditioning, still, I could probably get some commercials or whatever, and look around. I don’t. I mean, it’s nice here and all. But, I miss it,” he ended, a little lamely.

JC said “yeah,” softly. He rubbed a hand through his hair. “You think your mom will let you?” he said.

“Yeah, I think so,” Justin said. “I mean, I know most of the money’s in the trust fund thing until I’m eighteen, but there’s a bunch that’s just in a savings account, and it’s enough. And Jamie’s gonna be in Nashville in two weeks or so, so he can give me some studio time pretty cheap right after school ends and I can take the tape and go down, at least for the summer. And I don’t, you know. I don’t really belong here, and she knows that.” He took a deep breath. “JC,” he said. “Do you. I was thinking I would really need some help for this tape.”

JC’s eyes narrowed a little. “Mhm,” he said.

“Cause,” Justin said quickly, “it would really be good to have someone filling out a little lower, and maybe doing some harmony on a track.”

JC moved his right hand around restlessly on the strings. “So what’re you saying?”

Justin frowned. JC knew perfectly well what he was saying. “So would you come down with me and do it? It’d be really cool, I miss singing with you, and I. I know you haven’t. In a while. And I thought, um.” He couldn’t think of how to finish the sentence, and JC was frowning.

“Justin.” JC sighed and got up, opening the case on the desk and putting the guitar away. “I’m not,” he said. “I’ve got to go to college, I think, I need to go home and see my parents and start thinking about. I can’t live off of you and your mom forever, and I need a degree if I’m gonna get a better job.” He sounded grim, and like he’d almost made up his mind, and Justin knew he had to say something fast because once JC made up his mind he never changed it. He remembered vividly a fight he and Tony had had over whether to put a song they were doing in A or G, the two of them screaming at each other, then boiling down to a three-day glaring match that Justin had done his absolute best to stay out of. JC had won, mostly by outlasting Tony, who started feeling guilty somewhere in the middle of the second day and only kept it up as long as he did out of pride. Justin was at the other end of the set when they made it up and he couldn’t see Tony’s face, but he’d seen JC’s and that was set. He could have waited out another week, even two if they’d had the time. 

JC still had his back turned. Justin said “please, JC. I’d really like it if you could. Please? If my mom says yes?” 

JC’s shoulders hunched a little and Justin had a sudden vivid flash of the first night, three months ago, JC’s head bowed down in his hands, his shoulderblades standing out sharply through his thin tshirt.

“Yeah,” JC said softly, flatly, without turning around. “If your mom says yes, and if it only takes a few days, yeah.”

Justin wanted to jump off the bed and shout, but his throat was a little scratchy. He had to clear it before he could say “thanks.” So he just got up and hugged JC, hard, from behind because he still hadn’t turned around. JC didn’t turn, but he relaxed a little, folded his hands down over Justin’s and squeezed a little. Justin squeezed back around JC’s middle and went for the door, doing a little spin on his right foot. He was already going down the list in his mind of every song they knew.

III. 

Justin brought JC to Chris like an offering, though he has never been sure who exactly he was giving to whom.

Chris was, by far, the most intimidating person Justin had ever met in his entire life. He was much worse than Tony, who after all was only five years older than Justin and just knew about, like, Seattle grunge. Chris was ten years older, even if they were the same height, and he spun at clubs sometimes. Justin hadn’t been allowed to his apartment yet but he knew from casual conversation that Chris had stacks of actual LPs, and that he wanted badly to own turntables of his own. Chris had two piercings in each ear, and he liked whole /genres/ of music Justin couldn’t really define, like electronica. He knew what techno was, but he’d never actually heard any, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Chris. Talking to Chris was all about the game face, which he knew he had a good one of even if he didn’t know who Pete Tong was.

His game face was probably why Chris was interested in him, he knew, and it was the only reason he could talk to Chris at all. He had something Chris wanted, which was bravado and what Marian had called front-and-center quality. She’d had him do a solo once in a song that JC and Dale were singing mostly; he and Ryan had been doing backup, but during the rehearsals she had paused thoughtfully and said, “Justin, why don’t you try doing the bridge? Just take the melody up an octave and come down here to the front.” He had, and she’d nodded firmly and said he would be perfect. It had been one of JC’s parts, and Justin was kind of worried that JC might be mad at him, or worse, hurt, but he hadn’t seemed to mind at all. When the segment had been successfully taped, he’d bought Justin a soda to celebrate. 

Chris, Justin thought, might not be so accommodating if you took something he thought belonged to him. Luckily, he and Justin would never be in competition for parts, their voices and styles were too different, so it was ok. He didn’t treat Justin as an equal, but he also didn’t dismiss him, and Justin thought the other would come if he could just keep up the game face. He went and had lunch with Justin and his mother after they’d met five or six times at auditions for commercial jingles, Chris sitting next to him the first time in the waiting room and after a few minutes pointing out a way for Justin to get through a trap on his new Gameboy game and then saying “Hey, I’m Chris,” like Justin was his age, and talked to them both about a manager he had a contact with, and rehearsals and possible songs and what other voice parts they might need. Justin said he knew some people from MMC that would be really good. They’d need another lead tenor. 

He knew JC’s number in Maryland by heart, and he called it collect from the payphone next to the McDonald’s near Universal Studios after Chris left to go back to work, before he even called his mom to come and pick him up.

He hadn’t seen JC since they’d wrapped recording in Nashville, “Everything I Do” and “Right Stuff” and “God Bless America” with JC playing piano and doing harmony progressions. They’d stayed two days and then one last night, and the next morning JC had caught a Greyhound headed for Baltimore. He’d had even less than he’d taken to LA with him; one duffel bag and his guitar, and Justin had carried the guitar until JC slung the duffel under the bus and took it from him to carry on and put in the overhead rack where it would rattle around less. “Justin, it’s really good,” he’d said. “Thanks for asking me to do it.” Then he’d hugged him and gotten on the bus, and Justin and his mom had driven back to Memphis for a few days before they went back to Orlando. JC’d called once, while Justin was out riding his bike, and talked to his mom for a while; Justin had come home just before they’d been about to hang up and gotten to say hi and ask how he was doing. “OK,” JC’d said. He was working for a house painter, scraping and priming walls; sometimes he played guitar for a guy he’d met who liked to sing at open mikes. He thought he’d go to the community college in Bowie in the fall and take a year of classes and then apply for University of Maryland, maybe. “Art classes,” he’d said firmly, when Justin asked about music teachers. “Maybe some education.” He’d asked about Justin’s auditions, and then he’d had to go for work. 

8

JC didn’t have a car, obviously, so he borrowed Justin’s mom’s to drive them across town to Universal. They were going to meet Chris on his lunch break. JC’d gotten a special deal that meant he could afford the flight, but he’d come into the airport at 2 am, still half-asleep and with his left cheek red and cross-hatched from having been smushed up against the seat back. Justin had thanked his mother for staying awake to pick him up every few minutes on the way over, until she’d finally put on Bonnie Raitt, even though she didn’t like to drive with music when she was tired, and he shut up. 

JC fell asleep in the front seat almost immediately, right cheek cradled against the seatbelt in a way that Justin’s mom had always told him not to do. Justin sat behind his mom in the backseat so he could watch JC at an angle while he slept. He was even thinner than he’d been two months ago, with pinched lines around his eyes that could just be from being tired, Justin wasn’t sure. Justin’s mom reached over and shook his shoulder when they got back to the house, and he’d woken up just long enough to stumble inside and up the stairs to the guest room. 

When he finally got up it was nearly time to go; Justin had to shake him four times and then hover impatiently to make sure he shaved and put on matching socks, but finally he was in the car with Justin’s mom’s spare keys and they were on their way. Justin fidgeted in the passenger seat and looked at his watch; Chris didn’t have much time at lunch and JC’s flight back was the same night because he had work. JC didn’t seem worried, though he was unusually quiet, humming a little under his breath but not talking much except to say “it’s a left here, right?” when they came to the intersection at Thayer and Vine.

Chris was waiting for them when they got there, one shoulder hitched against the corner of the diner. “That’s Chris,” Justin said, pointing, and JC looked quickly before turning into a space and killing the engine. He pulled the parking brake up and slid out, tossing the keys over the car to Justin.

Chris pushed off from the wall and stood up when he saw them, coming over to meet them. He and JC shook hands. “Universal, huh,” JC said, gesturing at Chris’s shirt, even though he already knew that because Justin had told him at least twice. 

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I sing in a few of the shows, you know. You wanna....” He waved back at the diner, and they went inside. The waitress knew Chris, called him honey and got them a table right away even though it was pretty crowded with theme-park people and tourists and said she’d bring three cheeseburgers with all the fixings in just a minute or two. 

While they waited for the food JC and Chris sized each other up. They were both really good at pretending they weren’t, which Justin thought was a good sign, but Chris had a way of looking at you under his lashes until he was sure of you, and Justin had watched JC meet a lot of new people in the last couple of years and he saw JC’s new cool eyes, quieter then they had been, flickering over Chris, heard the slight edge on his questions. Chris explained to JC, like he had to Justin and his mom, about this guy Lou Perlman who was putting money into groups. Chris had a friend who was in a group called the Backstreet Boys, who were a big success in Germany, and his friend had introduced him to Lou, who had invited Chris to bring a group along if he could get one together. He thought that harmony groups were going to be really big again in the States, and he could help them get a record deal and more.

“And he’s an OK guy?” JC said. He was still and concentrated, moving a stray fry around on his plate but not looking down at it. “His....” He cut a quick glance at Justin. “He’s a good business man?” he said finally. 

Chris nodded. “Yeah, he’s a nice guy,” he said. “I mean, he wants to make some money back, but he’s willing to put it in, and he can really help us.” He was holding JC’s eyes, and Justin looked anxiously from one to the other. 

“All right,” JC said after a minute. He bit the end off the fry. “Why don’t we go outside and do some singing?”

8

Justin’s mom drove them back to the airport that night but she waited in the car while Justin walked JC inside and to his gate. “Did you like him?” Justin had asked as soon as they were back in the car after Chris shook hands with JC again and grinned at Justin and went back across the street to the Universal back gates. 

JC had smiled at him. “He seems like a nice guy, yeah. And he sure wants it enough,” he’d said, the second part more to himself than to Justin. “And he’s got a great voice, like chimes.... I dunno, Just.” And he hadn’t said anything else about Chris or the group, not in the car or at dinner or on the ride back to the airport.

“JC?” he asked, when they’d been through the security check and were halfway down the terminal. JC glanced down at him and smiled.

“I don’t know yet, Justin, I really don’t,” he said. “Give me a day or two and I’ll call you, ok. I....” He stopped while an overloaded luggage cart pushed by them. “Justin,” he said. “It’s a. I love to sing, you know, but I don’t.” His face twisted briefly. “Give me a day or two,” he said again. They were at his gate, and the flight was already starting to board. Justin watched him walk through the door and down the passage and as he ran back through the terminal to where his mother was waiting he prayed harder than he ever had in his life. The next day the phone rang when they were just starting dinner, and when Justin answered it JC said, close and joyous in his ear, “Will your mom let me stay with you all for a while?”

8

“Joey! Hey, Joey!” JC was shouting over the noise, practically in Justin’s ear as he jumped up in the seat next to him and waved frantically across the dance floor to an indistinct knot of people. “Joey!” he called again.

The knot coughed and unraveled a little, and a shadowy head, purple and gold lights flickering across it, turned toward them. JC waved again, and the figure detached itself and came towards them, moving in time to the rhythm of the music, stopping to talk briefly to a blond girl on the way.

“JC Chasez!” 

“Joey Fatone,” JC said, grinning, and climbed over Justin’s legs and out of the booth. He and Joey shook hands, then hugged, and stood smiling at each other for a second. Then JC slapped Joey’s shoulder and slid into the booth again, and Justin moved over to make room for both of them. “You remember Justin Timberlake, man,” he said.

“Yeah, hey, Justin,” Joey said, flashing a smile at Justin. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” Justin said. He couldn’t help smiling back. Joey had always been a nice guy.

“What’re you doing here, Jace?” Joey said. “I thought you were in LA with Tony, dude–” He bit off the rest of the sentence, and as JC turned away Justin caught a glimpse of his face and winced.

“Nah,” JC said, turning back to Joey, and his voice was steady. “Back here now. Dude, I was actually gonna call you, I think I need my Jeep back if you want to sell.” 

“Joe!” Chris set three Cokes down on the table. 

“Hey, Chris,” Joey said, sounding surprised. He half stood up. “You know Jace and Justin?”

Chris grinned. “Know them, my friend and compadre?” His gesture encompassed the whole of Pleasure Island around them. “Joe, buddy, we are going to take over the world!”

Joey laughed. “Uhuh,” he said. “This crazy guy and I work together,” he said to JC. “I’ve been singing in one of the shows over at Universal. So what are you all up to?”

“We’re starting a group,” Justin said. “A singing group.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joey said. He looked interested. “Just you three?” 

“Mhm,” Justin said while Chris slid in next to him on the other side. 

Joey raised an eyebrow.“You’re a tenor, right, Justin?” Justin nodded. “So two tenors and a falsetto, huh?” He laughed.

“Hey now,” Chris said, brandishing a Coke. “Don’t tell me we don’t look mean enough. We’re all man.” 

“Chris has a contact with a manager,” JC said to Joey. “He’s looking for vocal groups, so we thought we’d put one together and try for it.”

Joey pursed his lips. “Huh,” he said. “Well, if you want, you know, baritone or whatever, I’ve actually been looking to do some more singing.”

Justin felt Chris stiffen on one side of him, and JC on the other. “Dude, it’d be great,” Chris said, suddenly sober. “But we’re pretty serious about it, Joe, it’s gonna be a lot of time.” 

“No, yeah,” Joey said. “That’s cool. You got a repertory yet?”

JC shook his head. “I only just got down here for good a few days ago,” he said. “We’ve been mostly trying to decide if we should look for more people. But we’re gonna do some Boyz II Men, some older stuff, I dunno yet. Look, can we give you a call tomorrow? You still got the same number?” 

“No,” Joey said, “I moved out a few months ago. You got a pen?”

8

Joey came over the next day and they stood in Justin’s living room and did a few songs, and then they went out to McDonald’s for dinner and by the time Justin went up to order four extra apple pies, Chris’s five dollar bill clutched in his hand, Joey was in the group. With four parts they really needed a fifth, and Chris called up a friend of his named Jason, who had been in Lou Perlman’s other group for a little while. He was as poor as Chris was, and was working all the time, but he was a good bass and they all liked him. Things went fast: soon they had a name, they had a short list of songs to work on, they went out to restaurants at night sometimes and sang for the customers and even made a few dollars passing Chris’s old hat around, and then Chris came over to Justin’s one day for dinner and said, “I talked to Lou today and we have an appointment in a month.”

8

“OK,” Chris said a week later, and clapped his hands a couple of times when they were done with “More Than a Feeling.” JC was smiling a little, though Justin thought he still didn’t look satisfied, and he groaned inwardly at the thought of another runthrough, dropping back on the couch. Chris was talking, though, before JC could say anything.

“So we’re all set for tonight, right,” he said. “JC and Justin will pick up Joey and we’ll all meet at Risley’s at seven, and it’ll be ‘End of the Road’ and ‘More Than a Feeling’ and ‘Give In to Me,’ and don’t forget to warm up before you come. And if it goes well we can come back tomorrow night, Jamie says, because the piano player they were gonna have got bronchitis or something and they have to fill the slot. And it’s gonna go well tonight.” He grinned. “So then on Wednesday–”

“Chris,” Jason said. Justin turned at the note in his voice, and he saw Joey lifting his head from the back of the easy chair on the other side of the room. Chris got to his feet slowly. Jason sounded tired, and he looked it too, deep bags under his eyes that somehow hadn’t stood out as much while they were practicing. 

“What’s up, man?” Chris said, warily, Justin thought.

“Chris,” Jason said. “I think. I don’t think I can make it to Risley’s tomorrow. My shift manager has me signed up. And he asked me to come in on Wednesday and Saturday, too.” They were supposed to practice Saturday afternoon.  
“Jason,” Chris said, and he sounded dangerous suddenly, a flick to his voice that Justin didn’t want to have directed at him. “We said the group first, Jase.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jason said. “But I need the money, Chris. I’ve got rent in a week.”

“Look, man,” Chris said. “In a few weeks we have the audition, and you know we’re gonna be in, and then we won’t have to worry about it. But we have to get all the practice we can. And the group comes first.”

“Chris, then, I’m sorry, man,” Jason said. He wasn’t meeting Chris’s eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. I have to be making more money than this, and even if we get a contract with Perlman, that’s not a record deal. And we have, like, what? I mean, I’ve /seen/ Backstreet. We have some good voices, but really, we have an Irish kid, a guido, a short guy, a skinny guy, and a ten-year-old.” Chris’s and Jason’s eyes both flicked to Justin on the couch and he felt his mouth tighten. He wasn’t ten and this wasn’t his fault, but before he could say anything Jason said, “We don’t. I’m sorry, Chris, I really am. I hope you all make it, OK.”

“Look,” Chris said again, and then he stopped.

“Well then that’s it, I guess,” Jason said, and he turned around and walked out of the room. A minute later Justin heard the front door bang. He sat still for a second longer then stood up, but Chris’s head was sunk into his hands. JC caught Justin’s eye and shook his head slightly. He put his hand on Chris’s shoulder and squeezed a little.

“Better without him if he can’t do it, Chris,” he said. “You know that. We’ll be OK.” He sounded strong. Justin sank back into the couch and hoped that JC knew what he was talking about.

8

"Jeeeeeeeesus Christ," Chris muttered, low enough that Justin's mom couldn't hear in the next room. "And you don't know any more basses?" he said to Joey.

"No," Joey said patiently. Chris had asked him three times in the last hour. Justin was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the couch, trying not to be noticed so that Chris wouldn't say anything to him. 

JC came back in, shaking his head. He had been calling old friends all day, but so far Jeff was happy in his band in New York, Jordan couldn't afford the plane fare from LA and didn't want to leave his girlfriend anyway, and Mark was going to college. "Got a solo deal last month," JC said shortly, before Chris could ask about Leo. That had been the last name on his list. 

They sat around for a while, staring at each other glumly. Finally JC stirred, pulling out his pitch pipe. He warmed them all up and made them run through "End of the Road." They were in tune, but even with Joey using the full bottom of his range, they sounded so...breathy, Justin thought, remembering what Marian had called Ryan's voice after it broke. He hadn't gotten solos anymore.

After the last note Chris punched the pillow next to him, hard, and slumped back into the couch. JC put a hand on his arm and said "it'll be ok, Chris." Chris shook him off.

"No it /won't/, JC," he said, "it /fucking won't/--" He broke off. Justin's mother was standing in the doorway. "Sorry," Chris said, biting his lip. She raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything, turning towards Justin instead. 

"It's Bob, honey," she said, holding up the phone. Justin leapt off the floor.

"Hello?" he said into the headset, his finger in his other ear so he could hear Bob and not the others behind him in the room. He walked over to the window and looked out at the palm trees on the sidewalk. 

"I got your email, Justin," Bob was saying, "and I've been thinking about it. Sorry I took so long to get back to you -- you boys find someone already?"

"No, no," Justin said. "We haven't."

"OK then. I went down the list, but there's really only one boy who's the right age and the right range."

"k," Justin said. "Where's he live?"

"Mississippi." That was far, but not so bad, Justin thought. Then Bob sighed.

"what's the catch?" Justin said.

"I tried calling him already," Bob said. His voice was rich and regretful and made Justin think of afternoons spent going up and down scales and later crying when his voice broke and Bob said that he'd always have great control but he was never going to have much range. He bit his lip. 

"And?" he said.

"And his mother will never let him do it."

8

Chris called, because he was the oldest, and in charge, though JC hovered over one shoulder and Justin over the other until he was batted away. He wished they had another phone so he could listen in. Joey had had to go to work, and he'd made Justin promise to call and leave a message if anything happened.

Chris dialed, his fingers fanning out to count off rings. "Hello?" he said after the third. "This is Chris Kirkpatrick, can I talk to Lance please?"

There was a minute pause, and Chris's face twisted. /Grounded/, he wrote on the pad of message paper in front of him, and underlined it twice. JC groaned softly and stood up, slapping his forehead lightly.

"Yes, Mrs. Bass," Chris said earnestly. "Well could I talk to you for a couple of minutes then?...I understand Bob Westbrook already called you about this maybe...no, please, let me explain. We're very serious about this, ma'am, we've been together for nine months now and we're about to get a management deal--" which was only a little lie "--but our bass singer had a family emergency and we're kind of in a bind...well, ma'am, we've been trying everywhere, everyone we knew...Mr Westbrook says Lance's voice is really great, that he could handle it..." Chris fidgeted in his seat and rolled his eyes, but Justin didn't dare giggle or even move. He caught Chris's eye anyway.

"Tell you what," Chris said. "I'd like you to talk to one of the others -- I'm gonna give the phone to him, one of our tenors, Justin Timberlake -- he's about Lance's age...yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Mrs. Bass. Bye." He shoved the phone at Justin and mouthed /talk good, kid/.

Afterwards Justin could never remember how he got the phone from Chris's hand to his ear. By the time he said "hello?" and heard a sweet, but skeptical, Southern voice say "Justin?" the panic had subsided and he knew absolutely that he could do this.

“Yes ma’am,” Justin said, grinning big even though she couldn’t see him. It was about the attitude. He’d lost a lot of his accent in Orlando, but he put as much Tennessee back in as he thought he could get away with and not sound really cheesy.

“Well, Justin,” Lance’s mother said. “I hear y’all are getting a singing group together.”

“Yes ma’am,” Justin said again. “It’s gonna be five guys, all the way from bass to countertenor. That’s Chris,” he added. “And we lost our bass a couple of days ago, and we have a really important set of auditions in three weeks.” He tried to sound harmless and a little pathetic, but confident.

“And what makes you think my Lance is right for it?” She sounded like his own mother had when he’d asked to audition for Starsearch--amused but tolerant. That was probably a good sign.

“Well, I’ve been performing for a few years, I was on the Mickey Mouse Club for two seasons, and anyway while I was there I had singing lessons from Mr. Westbrook, and he’s been helping with the group a little bit while we’re getting started. Breath control lessons, and some arranging, and so on,” he improvised. Bob had never been anywhere near an Nsync rehearsal, but Justin thought he would go along with it if he and JC asked nicely enough. “So, anyway, since we’ve tried everything and we just can’t find someone we like around here, we asked him, and he thought of Lance. And we really trust his judgment, he’s the best, so all we’re really asking is that you let Lance sing with us just over the phone, and if we all like what we hear, maybe we can talk about it more?” He got the last part out as quickly as he could, before she could cut him off, and he thought he maybe sounded a little more pathetically hopeful than he’d meant to.

“Hmm,” she said. “Well, Justin, tell me one thing. How old are you?”

“Fourteen and a half,” he said. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. 

“And what’s happening to your schooling?”

He twisted the cord around his finger. “Well, right now I’m in ninth grade at Carver, because the others are working during the day and so we all rehearse at night. When we start to tour, I’ll switch over to a tutor and homeschooling. I really want to graduate from high school on time.” He’d been trying not to look at the others, but Chris punched his arm lightly and he looked instinctively. “Suck-up,” Chris mouthed. Justin grinned and held up his crossed fingers.

“Uh huh,” Lance’s mother said. “So how old are the other boys?” 

Justin winced. He shouldn’t have let that slip. Nobody ever guessed about Chris until it was too late if they met him in person first. “Um, Joey’s 17, JC’s 19, and Chris is 24. They’re all really responsible, though, and my mom chaperones just about everything. Lance would fit right into the middle, age wise.”

There was a brief pause. “OK, Justin,” she said. “I won’t worry about that one for right now. One more question. Lance has a family and a life here, friends, activities, church. And he’s not even supposed to be leaving his room except for meals and school for the next two weeks. Why should I even think about bringing him all the way to Florida for this?”

This was why Justin had wanted Chris to be having this conversation. He didn’t know what Chris would have said, but if he had, he wouldn’t be having to wish for Chris to do this, because he would have known what to--OK. He took a deep breath. “Mrs. Bass, you don’t even need to think about that yet,” he said. “Just...if he could sing over the phone? If you have two extensions? We could try singing together, something in harmony. Just to see if there’s even a chance.” He wasn’t above begging, he thought, but he held his breath to see if he’d have to.

He didn’t. There was another, longer pause, and then she laughed and said “OK, Justin, hold on. I’ll call him.” He heard the click of the phone on the other end, and a few footsteps, and turned back covering the mouthpiece with his hand just in case. JC had disappeared.

“She’s going to put him on,” he said. He could feel a big triumphant grin bubbling up inside, but told himself sternly not to count his chickens. “I said we should just sing together to see.”

“We heard, dork,” Chris said, but he was proud, Justin could see. JC came back into the room with the mobile headset from the kitchen.

“So we can hear,” he said. Justin frowned.

“Jace, I think you and Chris should sing with him,” he said. “If Chris does it there’ll be too much space in between, but y’all will make a range.”

“Nah,” JC said. “You and Chris. You talked her into it, you finish the job.” 

“No--” Justin said.

The phone on the other end picked up and he waved JC to silence.

“Hello?” a deep voice said in his ear. /Definitely/ lower than Joey, Justin thought hopefully. Good round tone quality.

“Hi,” he said. “This is Justin.”

“Uh huh,” Lance said. “My mom said. And Mr. Westbrook thought of me for a singin’ group?” His accent was a little thick, but not so bad.

“Yeah,” Justin said. “Nsync, cause we’re gonna do the really close harmony stuff. Like the Temptations or Boyz II Men.”

“OK,” Lance said. “So we’re gonna sing, and then if it sounds ok, what?”

“Well, you come to Florida,” Justin said. He wished he could get a read on this guy, but his voice, aside from the accent, was almost expressionless. He didn’t sound excited, or scared, or even bored. “And we all sing in person, and see if we like each other, and then in three weeks we have an audition with a really good management company, which we nail, and then, well, hopefully we’ll make it.”

Lance didn’t say anything for a moment. “What do you want to sing,” he said finally. Now he did sound a little nervous, and Justin felt his own confidence level rise a little. “I guess, like, something like Mary Had a Little Lamb. Just to do something really simple. But I’m gonna–Lance, do you have conference call there?” He felt his heart start to pound in his chest.

Justin could almost see his eyebrows go up. “Yeah, why?” was all he heard, though.

“Well, I’ve got JC, he’s the other tenor, and Chris, he’s the countertenor, here and they have a phone to share, but Joey, who’s our swing part, he’s at work. So if you could call him too, then we can all try it together.”

“Sure, I guess so,” Lance said slowly. “What’s his number?”

“What’s the number at the pizza place?” Justin asked.

JC started to say something but Chris shook his head and dug into his pocket for the napkin with Joey’s number on it. He handed it over and Justin read it into the phone. “Ask for Joey Fatone,” he said.

“OK,” Lance said, “lemme put you on hold.”

There was a dull silence on the other end. “Conference call,” he said finally to the other two. “He’s got a really deep voice, guys.”

The phone clicked on again and Joey said “Justin?” 

“Yeah,” Justin said. 

He could hear the ovens banging around in the background, but only a little, and it’d never affect Joey’s pitch. Joey was pure. He waved at the others and JC punched the on button on the extension. 

“Hi,” he said. “I’m JC.”

“Hi,” Lance said.

Chris took the phone. “I’m Chris.”

“Lance,” Lance said.

Justin looked at Chris, but Chris just looked back.

“OK,” he said finally. “Uh, Mary Had a Little Lamb, I guess. Lance, is, does your mom wanna listen?”

“I’m telling her to get on the other line now,” Lance said. “Uh, I have a piano, what note do you want?” 

“Jace?” Justin said.

“Let’s do it in A,” JC said into the phone. He and Chris crowded together, trying to share the earpiece as well as the mouthpiece. Justin thought it couldn’t possibly be working very well, but then he heard Lance hit the A.

“OK,” he said. “On my count, Lance starts, we’ll do two choruses. And a five, six, seven, eight.”

Lance sang.

Even through the telephone line Justin could hear how rich his voice would be in ten years, how full it already was. When he’d gotten through a line by himself, JC, who’d been listening carefully, came in, and Joey, while JC let Chris use the earpiece to hear the blend. Justin found his note in the third line and took it, and Chris swooped in from the top on “that lamb was sure to go.” He’d said two choruses and they began again, five parts, the sound tinny, the balance totally messed up with JC and Chris nearly drowning Joey and Lance out of Justin’s ears. He almost wanted to sob with the relief of knowing, absolutely, that everything would be ok.

When they’d finished nobody spoke for a few seconds.

Finally Joey said, “Look, I’m gonna get my ass fired, I. I’ll be home in a couple of hours, OK. Lance, I’ll see you in a couple of days. Bye.”

Justin cleared his throat. He could see Chris and JC hugging out of the corner of his eye.

“So, uh,” he said, and froze up completely. 

“OK, Justin, calm down,” Lance’s mom said on the other end of the phone. “Apparently one of you is already planning to meet us at the airport. Why don’t you give me your phone number, and we’ll have a look to see if we can find some good ticket prices. Just to meet y’all, you understand. And your mama. No promises, you hear?”

“Yes /ma’am/,” Justin said. “And thanks, Mrs. Bass, really.”

“You’re welcome, Justin,” she said. “We’ll see if it works out.” 

8

It worked out. Justin’s mom and Lance’s mom smiled at each other carefully when they shook hands, but within a few minutes they were sitting in the living room with a pitcher of sweet tea and talking about Baptist churches in Orlando. Lance’s mom was neat and compact, and so, it turned out, was Lance, who looked exactly like her. He had dark blond hair in a terrible bowl cut and enormous green eyes, and he was pale and skinny and wearing a polo shirt tucked into khakis with new sneakers. He didn’t look like his voice, but when he opened his mouth to say hello, it came out, sounding octaves lower than Justin’s own. Justin got two cokes from the kitchen and brought them back to the living room. He and Lance sat in chairs on opposite sides of the coffee table while their moms shared the sofa, still chatting about life in Florida. Lance didn’t say anything, and neither did Justin, just drank the sodas, but once Justin caught Lance’s eye and they grinned at each other.

After half an hour or so the back door banged shut and then JC knocked on the living room and came in. “Chris and Joey are coming in a few minutes,” he said to Justin’s mom, then smiled at Lance and his mom. “I’m JC,” he said, and shook Lance’s mom’s hand, and Lance’s too when he got up. 

Chris and Joey came in then, still in the Universal shirts they had to wear when they weren’t in costume, and there was another round of introductions all around. Justin bit his lip watching Lance’s mom look hard at Chris, and JC and Chris and Joey look hard at Lance, while Justin’s mom explained about Jason. “Chris?” she said when she was done.

“Mhm,” he said. “Well, Mrs. Bass, like I said on the phone, we’re really desperate for a bass right now. In two weeks we have an audition for a management company which has a group making it really huge in Europe, and he thinks we have a great shot if we can pull a group together. I’m not gonna lie, here, it’s gonna be a lot of work, but Lou, who’s the manager, says that if he takes us he’ll make sure that Justin and Lance can finish their high school work – two of the guys in his other group are still in school, and they’re getting private tutoring and all. So, it’ll be pretty much all work for a while, between us having jobs and Lance and Justin in school and all of us rehearsing all the time that’s left. We figure that we won’t get anywhere unless we’re gonna put everything into it. So, I don’t want to make it sound like we’re not going to have any fun, I just wanted you to know that our commitment is really serious and we expect the same from anyone who, you know, we wind up working with.”

Lance’s mom nodded and she and Lance looked at each other. “So how do y’all want to,” he said. 

“We want to do some vocal stuff with you,” JC said. “We’ve been working on ‘End of the Road’ by Boyz II Men, do you know it?” Lance nodded. “And the Star Spangled Banner,” JC said. “So first it’d be cool to hear you sing something by yourself, and then we’ll try putting all of us together and doing some harmony, and we’ll just hear how we all sound together. And then we can talk from there, I guess.”

“OK,” Lance said. Justin wished he wasn’t looking at JC; he wanted to see his eyes. Just like on the phone, his voice didn’t give anything away.

“Dude, lunch, though,” Joey said, grinning at Lance. Joey was the good cop, and that probably meant Lance looked nervous from where he sat. Justin jumped up.

“Yeah,” he said. “We got barbecue stuff together, like in the back yard, and then after we can sing.” 

8

In less than a week Lance was back in Orlando, this time with three bursting suitcases and without his mom. He stayed on Justin’s bedroom floor for a couple of days until Joey could clear his roommate out, and then Justin’s mom drove him over to Joey’s apartment and Lance was in Orlando to stay.

8

It was surprisingly anticlimactic in the end. Lou had a little studio, a practice room with a few stage lights and a raised area at one end, and he and a man he introduced as Johnny Wright, who had managed the New Kids on the Block and now managed the Backstreet Boys, and a woman called Robin Wiley, who wrote songs and was a vocal coach, and who JC had apparently met before, sat at the other end of the room and watched them. They ran through all the songs they’d worked on with Lance, “More Than a Feeling” and “End of the Road” and “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Give In To Me.” The last thing they did was a song Lou had given them a taped backup for a month ago, called “I Want You Back.” JC had called Ricardo, who’d choreographed a couple of numbers for MMC, and asked him to put together a routine for them. He’d done it for free, and all JC would say was that he’d called in a favor. It looked really cool, though, with neat flips, and they’d all agreed that Justin would sing the first verse, so he had a little solo dance piece too that he really liked. Lance didn’t like the dancing much; he’d learned Ricardo’s routine, all right, but he looked a little uncomfortable doing the body roll between Joey and JC, so Justin grinned at him quickly right before they all swung into the chorus together. He looked a little better when he had the harmony to anchor than he had on the verse when Justin was singing alone, and Justin quit worrying about him so he could watch JC out of the corner of his eye. JC looked good, open and loose and sexy, and his voice was soaring out into his solo, and Justin couldn’t see down to the end of the room with the stage lights on but when they slid into the final chorus with Joey’s voice powering them to an close, he knew they had a deal.

IV.

Lou rented them a house, a weatherbeaten rundown one with only three bedrooms that had needed a paint job for about ten years, but a house of their own, and no matter what Justin said or how much he begged, his mother wouldn’t let him live there.

He started by saying that they’d never be tight enough as a group if they didn’t all live together, and then that he’d actually get /more/ sleep because he wouldn’t have to go back and forth from rehearsal. He was getting a little frustrated by the time that he said, his brows drawing down, that he was old enough to live on his own, and when his mom raised her eyebrows at him he pointed out that JC had done it when he was only a year older than Justin was now. 

“JC’s own family wasn’t living a ten minute drive away, honey,” she said, and kept chopping lettuce. She was making tacos, Justin’s favorite dinner, and the bribery enraged him. He took a careful deep breath.

“But what if. I mean, I promise to be really good. And Chris will be there, and he’s-”

His mother actually put her knife down and laughed out loud, a real genuine laugh. She turned around to look at him and shook her head.

“What,” he said, irritably, because he absolutely knew that his mom approved of Chris. There’d been one awful moment, early in the first meeting, when she’d asked Chris to tell her about himself and his age had come out. Justin’s mother had pursed her lips and cast another look over Chris’s pierced ears and punky spiked hair, and she’d told Justin to go get her a Coke, honey, even though she could see there was an enormous line at the park’s concession stand. Justin had had to go anyway, casting an anxious backward glance at Chris, who was already leaning intently over the table, saying something rapidly straight into his mother’s eyes. When he’d come running back with the soda she’d been nodding thoughtfully, and after that afternoon whenever Chris came up in a conversation she’d made some admiring comment about hard work, and she always asked Chris how his mother was doing when she saw him on Monday morning, right after the weekend long distance rates ended. So she /knew/ that Chris was responsible and stuff, and there was no reason why he couldn’t stay. 

“What,” he said again, scowling, because there wasn’t anything funny about it, and she was leaning against the kitchen counter shaking her head a little and smiling at him fondly.

“No,” she said.

He tried his last card and he knew even as he said it that it wouldn’t work. “Lance’s mom is letting him,” he started, hopelessly. 

“Justin,” she said. “Lance is two years older than you and his mama doesn’t live in the same state. You are stayin’ in this house, and that’s final. Now set the table, JC and Chris are coming for dinner.”

JC and Chris came over for dinner a lot, by silent agreement with the Fatones, who still fed Joey three or four nights a week even though he’d moved into his own apartment a long time ago. The rest of them had a standing invitation, too, but only Lance took them up on it with any regularity. He liked how loud and crazy Joey’s family was. JC was crashing out on Chris’s couch, though, until Lou closed the deal on the house and they could move in, which would be about a week. Justin’s mom had said he could stay with them, but JC had said he’d taken advantage of their hospitality enough, and Chris’s couch was fine with him, and she’d raised an eyebrow but hadn’t argued. But Justin noticed she did get them over to eat often enough that neither of them would starve on their own cooking. They were both good at stretching budgets, clipping coupons carefully from the free inserts in the papers and buying weird things on sale to add to Ramen noodles, but until they started to get their allowance from Lou things would stay pretty tight. That night they showed up right on time, fifteen minutes before the tacos came out of the oven, the keys dangling from Chris’s fingers as he shoved JC through the door in front of him. They were laughing, and Justin felt his stomach tighten with jealousy. This was what it was going to be like all the time, only worse, with the four of them there and him here, and he scowled until Chris rubbed his head so hard he thought he’d get scalp burn, and he yelped and shoved at him and felt better. Also, JC got drinks, and showed off by stretching to get glasses from a shelf that neither Justin nor Chris could reach, and Chris jeered at him for being a beanpole and slung an arm around Justin’s shoulder, saying “well, let him do all the work, then,” and cracked up when it turned out the glasses were dusty because Justin’s mother couldn’t reach that shelf either and JC had to wash them before he could fill them up. “Serves him right,” Chris said, and Justin grinned.

They sat down right away with Lou and a guy named Johnny Wright, who had managed the New Kids on the Block and who, Lou said, would be in charge of day to day things with them, which made Justin’s insides shiver in delight, and he shared a quick grin with Joey, who was sitting across from him. Lou gave them all day planners and they put together a schedule. For the first month, they’d keep rehearsing five hours every night and all day on weekends, and start doing some local press in between. JC said that they should keep Martin and Ricardo choreographing, and Chris nodded in agreement; Lou said he thought that was fine for now, and they might talk later about somebody with more experience. He also said that they ought to stop singing in the tourist restaurants for now, until they got a really sharp repertory. 

“Now, in October or November,” he said, “I’m going to set up some things in schools around here. Dr. Phillips, for sure, Carver, Augustine, we’ll see. Then a little local tour, Florida, Georgia, Alabama. Then as soon as we have a real sharp show put together, ten numbers or so, real sharp, we’ll send you over to Germany and do some recording. Johnny’ll be back and forth between Germany and here until we get you over there with the Backstreet Boys. They’re real nice boys, real nice, they do a good show.” 

8

“Go find Lance, Just,” Chris said. Justin pulled the towel over the back of his neck again, dropped it on his bag, and went downstairs. Lance wasn’t in the kitchen, and the bathroom door was open, so he went out to the back yard. He found Lance around the corner of the house, leaning up against the wall with a cigarette in his hand.

“Lance,” he said, shocked.

Lance looked up. “Hey, Justin,” he said. He looked down at his hand, then shrugged and lifted it to his lips. 

“Your voice,” Justin said.

Lance tapped the ash onto the ground and took another drag. “It’s relaxing,” he said, after blowing the smoke out.

“But,” Justin said. Lance looked at him and he didn’t finish the sentence. 

“If you tell my mom I’ll seriously kill you,” he said. “She’d probably pull me out of the band or something. The last time she caught me I was grounded for a month.”

“OK,” Justin said. “You’d better not let JC catch you either.”

Lance smiled faintly. “No,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to see either.” He took a final drag, closing his eyes as he inhaled, then dropped the butt on the grass and ground it out with his heel. He dug a little hole with his toe and pushed the butt into it, then smoothed a little dirt over it. “Time to get back to it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Justin said, looking at the place where the cigarette was buried. He wondered if there was a little graveyard back here.

“Look,” Lance said, following his eyes. “I don’t do it that much. I just, this is really hard for me, ok, and it calms me down. Let’s go.” He started for the house. He’d sounded kind of mad, and Justin scrambled after him, catching at the damp sleeve of his tshirt.

“No, wait,” he said. “I was just kind of surprised. It’s ok. Just, like.”

Lance turned back a little and smiled. “Yeah, Justin, ok. Let’s go dance,” he said.

 

8

Apparently JC had lost at poker the night before after Justin left, because when he got there the next morning Chris was conspicuously lounging on the porch steps, and JC was cleaning palmetto grass out of a rusty push-mower, shoulders already turning a little pink in the morning sun. His shirt was tossed on the porch next to Chris, Justin saw as he braked his bike in the driveway, but he was wearing long jeans and sneakers to protect him from the grass. Justin, who’d had his own Orlando lawn-mowing experiences, felt his legs prickle in sympathy.

“Hi,” he called to JC as he went up to the house.

“Hey, J,” Chris answered him. Justin sat down next to him and got his shoulder bumped. He picked up Chris’s beer from the step below him, but Chris slapped his hand and took it away before he could even get one sip.

“Coke in the fridge, Just,” he said smugly. Justin kicked at the step a little, but went inside. Lance was reading at the kitchen table and Joey was watching TV in the living room; both of them called greetings, but it was too hot to talk, so Justin waved back and got a soda out. He held up a can in the direction of the table, but Lance shook his head without looking up from /The Red Badge of Courage./ He’d been reading it for almost a week now, Justin thought he’d have to be done soon. He ought to do some reading himself, but JC was mowing the lawn, and Chris, plus it was disgustingly hot and damp inside, so he went back out and slumped down in the comparative cool of the porch’s shade. Chris saluted him with his beer.

“Shut up,” Justin said, but he didn’t really mean it. He popped the top on his Coke and took a long drag. He should’ve brought one for JC, he thought, but then he saw the extra can of Bud half-hidden by JC’s discarded tshirt, sweating in the sun. The back of his nose fizzed and he rolled the cold can along his forehead. It cast a little bit of a shadow, cutting the glare so he only had to squint a little to watch JC pushing the mower along in sharp little jerks. He had to stop every lap or two to yank the grass out of the blades, leaving tough little piles in his wake, and even from the porch Justin could see the tiny rivulets of sweat rolling down his back. The waistband of his jeans was dark and damp with them. Justin thought he should maybe say something to Chris about, basketball or whatever, but it was way too hot and when he snuck a glance over Chris was watching JC too, sucking on his beer and smiling a weird curled smile, and not paying attention to Justin at all, so he decided not to worry about it and went back to staring at the lawn. When JC finally got close to the house Justin could see tiny individual beads of water clinging to the fine shaved hairs at the back of his neck. He took a big swallow of Coke and narrowed his eyes, tracking the progress of one of them down over JC's left shoulderblade and along the curve of his back, losing it when it joined up with a little river midway down his spine.

About half an hour after Justin got there, JC ran his hands back through his sweaty hair and dropped the mower to the ground by the porch. He came up the steps, snagging his beer along the way, and dropped down in the shade by Justin, spreading flat out on the floor. His face was bright red and damp and Justin abruptly felt a little guilty for not helping earlier.

“You want some water, JC?” he asked.

JC moved his head minutely. “Yeah, thanks,” he said. Justin jumped up and went in to grab some ice out of the freezer. Lance looked up as he turned the tap on. 

“JC done?” he asked. He sounded like he thought it was funny.

“Yeah,” Justin said. “He’s pretty beat.” He’d gotten down the biggest cup they owned, a 36-ounce plastic thing that said “Tampa Bay Yankees” in peeling white letters across the sides. Justin thought it belonged to Joey, but he wasn’t sure. He filled it up all the way to the top.

“I bet,” Lance said, deep and amused. “Chris was ridin’ him pretty hard this morning. Didn’t want to let him eat breakfast before he had to get to it.” He slapped a fly away from the table next to him and went back to his book. Justin went back through the living room, balancing his new Coke and the water cup, and pushed open the screen door with his back.

“Thanks,” JC said. He was sitting up again, wiping his face off with his tshirt and leaning back against the post at the top of the steps, but he took the water with his free hand and gulped it eagerly, his adam’s apple jumping against the skin. 

“You didn’t bring /me/ anything,” Chris said, high and wounded, as Justin flicked open his Coke.

“I’m not allowed to carry beer,” Justin said smugly. Chris smacked him on the shoulder but got up, stepping over JC’s extended legs and into the house. 

“That wasn’t nice,” JC said, but he was smiling.

“He wouldn’t let me have any earlier,” Justin said. /And he was being mean to you./ 

“Yeah, I saw,” JC said. “Good thing too, kiddo, cause I’d’ve kicked his ass.” He bared his teeth and laughed.

Justin rolled his eyes. He didn’t feel like talking about how young he was again. “Are your arms OK?” he asked instead. They’d gotten scratched up from the palmetto grass, hair-thin red stripes up and down his forearms that Justin knew from experience were probably stinging from the sweat. There were things about Orlando that Justin really didn’t like at all. Palmetto grass could up and swipe at you just like a cat caught the wrong way round.

JC shrugged, but before he could say anything Chris was making a big show of slamming the screen door open and popping off the top of his beer, taking a long, luxurious drink from it right in Justin’s face before he turned back towards JC and tossed him a little bottle. “Lotion for the–” he said, waving at his own arms with his free hand.

“Thanks,” JC said gratefully, and Justin wished he had thought of that. He couldn’t decide whether he was less mad at Chris, or more, but Chris settled it for him by asking Justin if the Coke was good. Justin bit his bottom lip, and figured that Coke was cheap, anyway, so he stood up and dumped the can on Chris’s hair, and suddenly wasn’t mad at all anymore.

He lost the advantage right away by laughing so hard that Chris got to knock him down the porch steps without him hardly resisting, and he was halfway through a noogie before Justin recovered enough to elbow him in the gut. He was all sticky with Coke, which almost made Justin start laughing again, and they rolled around and around on the newly cut lawn. Justin didn’t have to say uncle until Chris managed to get ahold of some of JC’s palmetto ends and threatened to drive them down under his shirt, and he had to give up. It was OK, though, because JC had gone inside and gotten them all new drinks, and they lay around on the porch panting and grinning at each other until Lance came out to tell them that he’d finished and it was time to practice, and they got up and went inside to sing. JC still didn’t put his shirt back on the whole time.

*******

V.

About six months after Justin and his mom moved to Florida, they'd had their first hurricane. They didn't really have anywhere to evacuate to, and Orlando was too far inland to worry too much about flooding anyway, so they'd just stayed put. Justin's mom had gone to the store for extra milk and bread and gallons of water, and Justin had helped her tape the front windows. That was the day before the storm. After that, there hadn't been anything to do but wait; the wind picked up a little, then a lot, but still, for a full day, there was nothing but the pressure building up in the back of Justin's head until it ached, and he moved restlessly around the house. He couldn't settle down to anything, not video games or basketball or practicing, let alone the homework he knew he ought to have been doing. When the storm had finally come, it had been scary -- rain whipping hard against the windows, the palm trees in the street bent double -- but it had also been a relief, to know what it was like at last.

Germany is a lot like that. 

They practice some, a couple of hours a day, but the rest of their schedule is so intense, shows and interviews and autograph-signings, that there's not really that much time to worry or anticipate. Justin and Lance have even less free time than the others, since whenever they stop working on the group, they have to do schoolwork. Or at least Justin does; Lance cares even less than him, and is also quicker at math, so he usually finishes fast. Justin both resents him for this, and is incredibly grateful that Lance almost never leaves the motel room when he's done, but instead sprawls on the other bed and reads, silently waiting Justin out. They always meet Joey and Chris and JC for a quick lunch between homework and the first press of the day. Usually Chris, at least, has obviously just rolled out of bed, and it's a good thing Justin likes him so much or it would be infuriating, how quick he is, how unfazed he seems by the cameras in his face, the reporters asking the same question for the seventeenth time that week.

“And is JC the most responsible?," one wants to know.

“Oh yeah,” Chris says. “He’s our big bad voodoo daddy, all right.”

Justin’s German is iffy at best, but he thinks this loses something in translation. Also, the cameras miss Chris slapping JC’s ass as he says it, which further weakens the joke but is probably just as well.

**

Later, Justin will remember the night JC wore Chris’s leather jacket, the one he’d spent two thirds of a week’s salary on from a thrift shop in Orlando. It had been every penny except rent and he’d eaten the ramen and instant couscous in the communal cupboard until Justin finally said he should just come and eat at his house after rehearsal until he got paid again. It had a bunch of pockets and some buckles that Chris kept to a shiny polish and he always took it off if they were going to be eating something messy because he’d never be able to afford to have it cleaned. He said he was going to buy a motorcycle when they had a little more money, and he’d need the jacket then. It was much too big for JC, but he’d been shivering earlier in the evening, and Chris had pulled it off and tossed it to him. He hadn’t even made a sarcastic remark about JC’s choice of sleeveless outfit for the evening, and Justin wondered suddenly whether something was wrong with JC, if there was something Chris knew about that he didn’t that was keeping Chris from teasing JC, making him, instead, give him his jacket and touch the top of JC’s head, the back of his shoulder, as he passed JC to walk ahead with Joey.

**

It's a pretty ordinary afternoon when things fall apart. They've just finished a series of shows, and they have a whole day off after morning press before they go on the next morning. Justin even finishes his math fast for once, with Lance's help, and walking out of the room early, he feels light and free and happy, with half an hour to kill, and he wonders if he can get JC to go for a walk with him. 

They've got the whole top floor to themselves, not many people interested in staying in a crappy hotel during a miserable March cold snap, and Justin wanders down towards the lounge at the end of the hall, a little room with a piano and some magazines. He can hear some movement in there, and he doesn't want to disturb a maid so he just pulls back a corner of the heavy curtain covering the door to check. But it isn't a maid; instead it's JC, pressed back into a corner of the couch, and Chris kneeling over him, one hand threaded into his hair, kissing him.

Justin freezes to the spot, hand clenched in the drape.

It doesn't last very long, only a minute or so. Justin's never seen anyone making out in real life, and it doesn't look anything like it does in the few porn clips he saw back home, furtively downloading them to his mom's computer when she was out for a few hours, being sure to wipe the browser history and delete the clip and then sweating for a few days, waiting to see if she'd noticed. It was too nervewracking to do much, and since they've been in Germany he hasn't had a chance at all. So he doesn't have a lot of experience but he's still never seen anything like this. He's also pretty sure it doesn't look much like he did himself the few times he kissed girls -- Britney that once under the bleachers, Stacy who he took to the 9th grade dance. He's never much wanted to kiss girls, at least not the way Chris is kissing JC, with a thumb stroking along his jaw, leaning their foreheads together. 

After a minute Chris pulls back a little. "Hang on," he mutters against JC's lips, so quietly that Justin hardly hears it. "Can you, I promised mom I'd call her and I'd better do it before dinner."

JC laughs and sits up. "Your mom?" he says, pulling his tshirt back into place where it had, Justin sees, been shoved up on one side.

Chris grins at him and flicks him in the chest. "Family is very important to me," he says, in a mocking version of the tone he uses with reporters, but even across the rushing in his ears, Justin can hear he means it. Chris gets up, touching JC's hair, and Justin panics, diving sideways into the old hall phone booth that's, thankfully, right next to the lounge; but when Chris comes out he turns the other way, back towards the room he's sharing with -- of course. He's sharing it with JC. Justin feels sick.

He can't think what to do, it's like he's moving underwater, so he's still sitting there, collapsed on the hard wooden seat, feeling old carved graffitti under his fingers, when JC comes out of the lounge, his cheeks a little flushed, and sees him there.

"Just?" he says, his brow wrinkling a little. Justin's throat works but he can't say anything in time, and JC says again, more sharply, "Justin? Is something -- honey --" and then he looks at Justin with horrible eyes and said "Oh my God," and Justin flees.

He hears JC calling after him to wait, wait, Justin! but he's moving faster, and he's in Lance's room with the deadbolt shoved behind him before JC can get there. Lance looks up from his bed, startled, and Justin begs him wordlessly. He frowns but gets up, and motions Justin towards the bathroom. Justin sits on the toilet seat and listens to JC's rushed voice, high and strained, and Lance's steady deep refusal. Then the door shuts and Justin hears the lock turn over.

"I want to go out," he says when Lance opens the bathroom door. "Tonight, right now." 

"Let me find Joey," Lance says.

8

That's the great thing about Lance. He told Justin one afternoon in Orlando about all the sneaking out he used to do at home, and Justin had been goggle-eyed at the variety of methods he claimed to have used. Now, in under ten minutes, he has Joey throwing a sneezing fit and asking Justin’s mom if he can sleep in the other bed in her room that night so that he wouldn’t risk infecting one of the others, and Justin could share Lance’s room; and he’s loaned Justin a mesh shirt and gotten him off their floor of the hotel without Johnny or Justin’s mom or, most importantly, either JC or Chris, seeing them go. Suddenly Justin believes every story Lance had ever told him about Mississippi.

Lance takes him to a place called the Kaiserkeller. Justin's eyes open wide when he sees the name painted over the door, beaten and weatherstained, actually forgetting for a second why he's here, and Lance laughs at him. "Are we in Hamburg, dumbass?" he says, and ruffles Justin's hair, which is made only a little better by the fact that Lance has to reach up to do it. Justin's had another growth spurt -- he's nearly as tall as JC now -- and it's pretty clear that Lance probably never will. It doesn't seem to bother him. Lance and Chris, Justin thinks sourly. Apparently tall isn't everything. JC would have to crane his neck down to kiss Chris, he'd have a crick if they did it for too long.

They aren't in Hamburg, they're in Bonn, and Justin knows it perfectly well. The place is a total dump, enough so that even Justin can get in without much trouble. Lance slips the bouncer twenty deutschemarks and that was that. Inside, it's all dim light and pounding noise from the stereo system, and the floor is sticky under Justin's feet. Lance gets a couple of tall steins and brings them back to the table Justin snags in the corner, where he can sprawl against the pockmarked wall and drink without being bothered.

Lance doesn't ask him if he's ever been drunk before, and he's grateful.

Sneaking back into the hotel is actually much harder than sneaking out. For one thing, it's dark and quiet and there's nothing to blend into. For another, the doors all lock from the inside, so there's no going in the back way they'd gotten out by. Also, Justin is swaying a little as he walks, and on the stairs once the carpet rears up in front of him and he flings an arm out. "Lance?" he whispers.

"Shhh, Justin," Lance says.

He opens his mouth to protest -- he is being quiet, he is, quieter than the buzz of the fluorescent light above them -- but Lance claps a hand over it as he eases the service stairs to their floor open. Johnny's room is right next to the elevator, Justin knew.

"OK," Lance says under his breath as they ease past Justin's own door, Joey's snores clearly audible. Justin feels bad for his mom, but Joey is a good guy. He sure *sounds* like he has a cold. Lance's room is at the end of the hall, and Lance is muttering "just a few more steps, Jup, c'mon, bed soon," and it sounds like heaven. He lolls against Lance's shoulder as Lance digs around in his pocket for the key, easing the lock open, and then the door, carefully, because the hinges squeal badly if you bang them open, they'd discovered that afternoon.

JC is sitting on Lance's bed, leaning back against the wall with his legs crossed Indian style in front of him. His eyes glint, glowing out of the dark room as they catch the light from the hallway, and tha's when Justin knows he's going to be sick. He lurches a little, bile rising sour in the back of his throat, and he hears dimly Lance saying "whoa" and "trash," feels two sets of strong cool hands holding his head and his back, long fingers stroking his hair back, and he shakes and sweats helplessly, his vision fizzing as he crouches over the wastebasket.

In a few minutes his head clears enough that he can sit back. He hears movement behind him, but he doesn't dare to turn around. Lance comes into his field of vision, squats down in front of him. "Jup?" he says softly.

"Yeah," Justin says. His tongue feels huge and grotesque and tastes disgusting. He thinks he might be sick again if there were anything left to get rid of, but he can't seem to find the energy even to dry-heave.

"Let's get you to the bathroom, ok," Lance says. He slides an arm around Justin's shoulder and helps him up. 

The bathroom is at the end of the hall, and Justin can hear water running, impossibly loud and metallic. It turns out to be JC rinsing out the trash can in the bathtub, and Justin feels his insides shrivel again.

"Rinse out," Lance says to him. JC doesn't look up, and Justin leans miserably over the sink and uses the mug Lance hands him to rinse and spit a few times. Behind him, JC turns the spigot off. 

"Brush your teeth," he says, and Justin does. Mint and bile and his mouth still tastes like ass, but his head is a little clearer. He wishes it weren't. "Lance," JC says behind him, and his voice is chilly. "Sleep in the other room. Chris knows you're coming." Lance doesn’t say anything, and he’d always walked quietly, but after a few seconds Justin can feel that he's gone.

Justin waits, but JC doesn’t say anything, just scoops an arm around his waist and walks him back down the hall, the newly-clean trash can dangling from his free hand. Justin thinks maybe if he keeps his eyes very tightly shut, he’d wake up and it would be yesterday morning, but although his luck was usually way beyond good, when he has to open them to navigate through the door and into the bedroom, it's still very dark in the air shaft at the end of the hall and his mouth still tastes like all the things his mother had ever warned him about.

JC clicks the door shut and shoots the bolt behind them. “In the morning, ok, Just,” he says, and Justin is suddenly too tired to even nod. He feels himself swaying a little, but before he can stumble back against the door JC has his arm around him again. “Bed,” he says, and Justin can’t help but drop his head against JC’s shoulder. JC walks him towards the bed, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt as they go.

“Shhh,” JC says when he opens his mouth. “C’mon.” So Justin lets him strip off his shirt and jeans, sit him down on the bed and take off his shoes, pull one of Chris’s big old tshirts down over his head when Justin raises his arms obediently; lets JC push him back onto the bed and under the covers. The mattress is a little lumpy, scratchy against the bare skin of his legs, but not so bad. He tries not to think about anything but how nice it feels to lie down, as JC stretches up and pulls the chain on the overhead light.

He can hear JC rustling just beyond the bed. Getting undressed, he thinks, and tries to unthink it, and fails, and feels his eyes start pricking with the tears he’s been keeping back. They itch, and he buries his face in the pillow. He wishes JC would go away and leave him alone. Go sleep with Chris and Lance. And Joey too probably. Everyone but him, and then there's a blast of cold air and then a very warm body right beside his, a hard arm around his shoulders. JC still has on a tshirt and shorts, as much as he was wearing, but still, and the tears start to leak out harder and faster. He twists away as much as he can without falling out of the bed, his nose clogging up, and he has to open his mouth and take a sobbing breath to get some air. JC says “oh Justin, oh honey, oh baby, c’mon” right in his ear, and hauls him back across the bed, against his chest. He probably is still a little drunk, he thinks, fuzzy in his head and his stomach rolling gently against his ribs, and he thinks about Florida and his mom and gives up and cries and cries, right into JC’s tshirt while JC strokes his back, long rocking swirls of palm against his spine and JC curled around him like a seashell, making a low humming noise that travels straight down into his chest. 

When he's done he thinks he might throw up again, he feels so raw and sore, but he doesn’t seem to have more in him than a few more hiccuping sobs. “JC,” he says, feeling his voice scrape the bottom of his register. Johnny is gonna kill him in the morning. 

“Sleep,” JC murmurs into his hair. It's so far past when he should have been in bed that he can’t keep himself from sinking down.

8

He wakes up abruptly, cold on one side and sweaty on the other, and with a painful hardon, which gets worse instead of better when he realizes that JC is still there. He can feel the slightly soft curve of JC’s chest pressed up against his spine, and JC’s arm laying long across his waist. He feels sick again.

He waits a few seconds but JC shows no signs of moving. He has to – he doesn’t know, piss or jerk off or – he has to move, and he hunches his shoulder down and eases away until he's sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Just?” JC says behind him, still half-asleep, and Justin knows it's a terrible idea but he turns around anyway. JC is lying half on his side, skin flushed where it had lain against Justin’s, hair flattened oddly on the right from the pillow. His eyes are squinted a little against the almost nonexistent light from the transom, and Justin closes his eyes and ignores his stomach and does it, leans down over him and kisses him.

JC’s breath is warm and sweet, even in the morning, and his lips are soft except for one tiny edge of chapping, his hands around Justin’s biceps warm. They flex and tense and Justin thinks desperately /no no no not yet/ and reaches out for JC’s waist, clings to all the muscle he can reach and screws his eyes shut as tightly as he can, and for a few seconds it works, but JC is bigger than he is and stronger, and he pushes himself up and pushes Justin away at the same time until Justin can’t keep their mouths together any longer. As they separate he feels his breath hitch again and he forces it down as JC sits fully up in the bed and reaches a hand up to his chin, making him look up.

“Justin,” he says softly, and he sounds so sad that it makes Justin think of the first month after California. He had never wanted to hear that tone in JC’s voice again. His stomach cramps with guilt.

“Yeah,” he says, and he's proud of how steady his voice is, even. It doesn’t even betray that his left temple has a short, sharp electrical wire going off behind the skin. He makes himself raise his eyes to meet JC’s.

“You know we can’t,” JC says.

Justin nods. The fine skin at the bridge of JC’s nose is wrinkling. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he says quickly, and pulls away.

JC reaches out and catches his chin again. “You come back here when you’re done, Justin,” he says. 

Justin flees.

He goes down the hall to the bathroom and sticks his head under the cold tap in the tub, which he’d seen in movies before. It kind of works, in that he loses the hardon and the headache goes down, and when he comes up, wet and spluttering, he even feels a little better.

When he comes out of the bathroom he goes straight to his mom’s room for breakfast.

8

JC comes in about twenty minutes later, the last one to arrive, even after an unusually subdued Chris showed up. Justin keeps his eyes on his donut. He’d poured himself coffee and even though he doesn’t like it much it's helping cut through the dense wet pain in his head. He can feel the flow of blood pulsing in his ears.

They go over the schedule, or rather, his mom and Johnny talk and Joey and Chris put in a quiet word over one thing and another, and Justin knows he is an idiot. It isn’t like he could get out of it forever, in another ten minutes they’d all be going to get dressed and he wouldn’t be able to, another five minutes, three minutes and he’s finished his coffee even though he’d taken tiny sips, one minute and everyone is getting up. He has to go, leave his mom’s room, because his suitcase is in Lance’s room – his own fault, he thinks grimly.

The second the door closed behind them he turns to Lance.

“You knew, didn’t you,” he says. “The whole time.” He doesn’t have to pack because he’d never unpacked the night before, so after he puts a new tshirt on he closes the suitcase and put it on the floor.

“Justin,” Lance says. He pauses for a second while he closes his own case, already neatly packed, but he doesn’t sigh or try to avoid the question. “Yeah, I did.”

Justin feels his throat tighten. “You could’ve said,” he says. “I could’ve handled it.”

“I know,” Lance says. His eyes are steady. “And Chris wanted to tell you. But JC thought you shouldn’t have to lie about it yet, and it could wait for a while. He didn’t know, you know, and I didn’t want to tell him.” 

There's a rap at the door. Lance’s eyes fall. “Come in,” he says.

JC comes in almost silently. Justin looks through his lashes. He looks coldly furious, the way he had last night right before Justin threw up. “Lance,” he says. “Could you take the suitcases downstairs, I want to talk to Justin for a second.”

“Sure,” Lance says. Justin sees him shoot a look towards where he's sitting on the bed, but he doesn’t look up enough to meet Lance’s eyes as Lance picks up his suitcase and slips out the door.

“Sorry,” Justin says as soon as the door closed.

"You better be," JC says. But even as he says it Justin can see him losing the anger. There's a long pause, and JC sits down on the other bed, cross-legged, and picks up one of the pillows Justin hadn't slept on last night.

"His jacket," Justin says finally, because it's clear JC actually has no idea how to start, but they'd better start somewhere or Justin will never be able to leave this room. It doesn't make any sense, but JC understands what he means, and he tips his head back against the headboard and shrugs, the last of the anger gone.

“He’s kind of romantic,” JC says to the ceiling. “I dunno.” He's smiling to himself, now, hugging the pillow a little to him. Then he seems to remember what they're doing and he sits up straighter, fixing Justin with a level look.

"JC," he says really fast before JC can say anything. "It's ok, I was just upset. I'm fine." JC looks skeptical, but he doesn't say anything, so Justin adds, stomach clenching "This morning too. I guess I just, I like you."

He waits for JC to do what JC's never done: tell him he's too young. But JC doesn't. He looks at Justin and there's just, Justin can see it, nothing there but affection. When JC tells interviewers he thinks of Justin like a brother, he means it. Justin wishes he were dead. He has no idea what to say.

He's saved when his mom knocks on the door, calling, "Come on, boys, van's packing up now." Justin calls back that they're coming and gets up right away, though JC doesn't, a little frown line appearing between his eyebrows and Justin thinks, all right, fifteen more seconds.

"Really, JC," he repeats. "It's ok. I'm fine," and he pushes open the door really fast and picks up his suitcase and calls again down the hall, "Yeah, we're ready!" Behind him he feels JC getting off the bed, but he's out the door already.

Justin sits right behind the driver's seat in the van. Johnny always drives, and Justin's mom sits next to him. Justin usually likes to sit in the back, as far as he can get, and Chris or JC usually sits with him, goofing around. But today Lance and Joey are sitting in the middle and Justin grabs the front, and when JC gets in, Justin turns his shoulder and he hears him sigh and slide back all the way, to where Chris is sitting in the back. It's a long ride to where they're going, and Justin doesn't turn around the whole time.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 90% of this over a decade ago and it languished on my hard drive until this morning when I found it looking for something else and thought, well, given the recent reunion/mild burst of popslash nostalgia, let's post! So I wrote a few more short scenes to tie together what I already had, even though the number of people that still want to read 30+ pages of unrequited JC/Justin is probably approximately two. 
> 
> The original plan, for the curious, was to spend more time building up the Chris/JC relationship and also to take the story much further and have it wind up Lance/Justin, but obviously I ran out of steam :)


End file.
